Work lights, often known as “trouble lights”, are widely used in automotive repair shops and other repair settings and construction settings. Such work lights are often in a form that can alternatively be handheld or hung from a suitable elevated object such as a raised automobile hood.
Incandescent work lights have been in use, but they have some drawbacks. Incandescent work lights can be hot to the touch. Also, work lights are all too often dropped or knocked down and fall onto a hard surface, and this often results in breakage of an incandescent bulb or its filament. An additional drawback of incandescent work lights is a safety hazard that results from the possibility of the bulb breaking with its hot filament in close proximity to flammable material such as spilled flammable liquid if the work light suffers a fall.
Fluorescent work lights exist and they have advantages over incandescent work lights, namely greater energy efficiency and a reduced hazard of igniting flammable materials if they suffer a fall. However, fluorescent work lights can experience breakage of their bulbs if they suffer a fall. Although breakage of an operating fluorescent bulb is not as likely to ignite nearby flammable materials as breakage of an incandescent bulb is, there is still a slight chance that a fluorescent bulb can ignite adjacent flammable materials if broken while operating since fluorescent lamps normally have hot electrodes while they are operating. There are fluorescent work lights that have impact cushioning means included to increase their ability to survive falls, but they may experience breakage of their bulbs if they fall onto a hard surface.
LED work lights are better able to survive falls than are work lights that have glass bulbs. Furthermore, LEDs do not generally operate with parts hot enough to ignite flammable materials, so even falls that do result in breakage are less likely to cause fires than are similar falls of work lights that have glass bulbs.
LED work lights of increasing light intensity are relatively costly. LED work lights of increasing light intensity utilize LEDs that can produce sufficient heat to damage the LEDs or other circuitry. Battery operated LED work lights can have limited run times and can be fairly large.
As described further herein some features of some aspects of the invention will address some of the issues raised above. Other features and other aspects will address other issues with existing LED lights to provide alternatives or improvements thereto.